Sunday, April 08, 2007

Same Old, Same Old

The war between Retribution and Holy continues unabated on the Paladin forums. It's pretty much the same problem that has always existed, though currently the divide is larger ever since paladins superceded Holy priests in raid healing.

It's amusing, in a sad way. The priests are unhappy that paladins are better healers, and the paladins are unhappy that paladins are better healers.

I really hope paladin healing doesn't get nerfed though. I really like being able to act as healer for a 5-man. Having paladins available as primary healers makes running instances so much easier. Perhaps we could stand to be nerfed a bit in raid healing, but any hit is going to make 5-mans harder. I do not want to return to the old days of spending half an hour or more whispering priests and druids to see if they want to come on a run.

I think that there is a deeper problem with paladins. Just take a look at the classes and their current roles:

And in many ways, this is part of the problem. The fact is that paladins are fundamentally different from all the other classes in the game. If more classes lacked the "dps" part, the game would be designed differently. I've already commented on how the battegrounds are designed for high dps classes, with short respawn timers.

I think part of the problem with paladins is that every other class has a dps component designed and built into it, and paladins really don't. Seal and Auto-attack, and maybe judge every 10s. One real combat move at 41-points in Retribution, almost an afterthought in many ways.

Holy can be nice dps with the right amount of spelldmg gear, starting to be noticable from around 400+ onwards.

And prot.. boy, what a grand tree. I levelled my Draenai from 58 to 70 in Prot, soloing group quests a Hunter couldn't. Yes, it takes a while, but it's also pretty quick because you just don't die. Ever. On top of that, our MT plays both a feral Teddy and a Paladin in Prot - the paladin is geared out nicely and continuously ends up on spot 1 or 2 of the dps meter in the 5-mans. Not by far, more likely by 0,5% difference, but he beats affliction warlocks and rogues in dps output. I've only seen him humbled by a hunter yet. With the amount of mana he gets back from healing, he can spam consecrates until kingdom come, and the reflective damage from holy shield and shield spike with the right amount of defense gear and spelldmg is right nice. Add reckoning pared with SoR, and you've got your dps tank.

What if Blizz decided to add a talent skill in the ret tree which increased DPS by 30%,but removed the paladins ability to heal others? You could still heal yourself which would make you a DPS force to reckon with, but in terms of back up healing, you would be useless.